Drifter: a person who is continually moving from place to place without any fixed home or job.
Yup that pretty much describes me. For the past two years I've been bouncing around the country from job to job seizing opportunities, discovering my passions and just in general having a great time. While it is a fun way to live, it's not without it's drawbacks. My life is in constant flux. To come and go with the changing of the seasons is tough and can often be stressful.
When I first started to do the seasonal employment gigs I had two weeks to pack up everything I would need until September in May. I then put this into my two backpacks and left to go on a cross country road trip, leaving my car in North Dakota and flying from Fargo to Palm Springs. I made a few mistakes. The first being that I packed a little too much of the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff. I also didn't pack any 'going out' clothes. I then went home with too much stuff and left for my next job missing things that I might have liked. I've learned a lot since thing, knowing there are things that I really like regardless of where I'm going, for instance, a nice shirt or two and a pair of 'town shoes', jeans are another thing I feel more human with. Also I've learned to pack a towel and pajamas. I've forgotten to pack a towel a few places I've lived and soon realized it is an essential item, and pjs are just nice to have. If I can get it into my backpack, it can go. Otherwise, I need to rethink the amount of stuff I'm carting around.
Another thing that I've realized since moving around a lot is planning. Traveling takes time. I've stopped being stressed about who's going to pick me up and how to get somewhere. I can get pretty much anywhere I need to go now. As long as I get close enough I should be able to take a cab or public transport to get from point A to point B. Prime example: I didn't know who was going to pick me up at the ferry dock until the ship was docking. Most of the time things work out, when they don't I feel that I'm pretty resourceful.
Going back and forth with work/ travel has made me perfectly fine with changing jobs across the country, such as going from Alaska to New Hampshire. Before I used to get stressed and imagine my life in upheaval. But I think that staying in one place now would stress me out more than moving around.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Lets Get Physical
I realize I haven't written here in over a month. Reason why? I've been busy. The season was going very strong and it's one of the better seasons that the company has ever had. With less weather cancellations and more tours we've been working for over a month straight without many breaks. I'm by no means complaining every tour that comes off the helicopters is $ in my pocket. But walking around in snow and ice all summer has begun to take it's toll on my body, both for the good and the bad.
In the winter time I sit in an office and take phone calls. Not going to lie, it's not the most physically challenging or mentally stimulating job I've ever done but it does pay the bills and gets me a free seasons pass so that I can ski. I do go out on the slopes about once a week which hardly qualifies as a work out schedule. I truly began to feel a bit like a blob last winter even though I didn't gain or lose any weight, just my muscles changing.
In the fall I probably walk with my kids about 10-15 miles a day. Which is a good work out. But I eat crap food all week long. But here on the glacier I walk probably about the same but in snow. Which if anyone has ever walked in snow for a long period of time it will build muscles and change the shape or your legs. Trust me. I go and hike out to the photo spot, sit and wait for people to go by on sleds, then I take their picture and hike back. I do this about 10-11 times a day (round trip) and it adds up. I also lift 5 gallon buckets of poop (20-30lbs) in each hand every morning and carry them to the poop barrels. On every helicopter there is at least a 5 gallon jug of water which has to go to the water 'buffalo' (aka a large water storage container) and each of those weigh 40+ pounds. My arms and legs get a work out every day which is great.
But my feet are gross. From living in rubber boots all summer long in sweaty socks they are terrible, fortunately no trench foot yet. I have also strained a muscle in my foot and can feel a huge knot in the muscle which hurts every now and again but is working it's way out. I also have strained both my knees. Under the knee cap is where they hurt the most. Once again, it's just a strained muscle which has slowly been going away. My last problem: a sunglasses tan. Which is bad. I look a raccoon. But such is life on the glacier.
In the winter time I sit in an office and take phone calls. Not going to lie, it's not the most physically challenging or mentally stimulating job I've ever done but it does pay the bills and gets me a free seasons pass so that I can ski. I do go out on the slopes about once a week which hardly qualifies as a work out schedule. I truly began to feel a bit like a blob last winter even though I didn't gain or lose any weight, just my muscles changing.
In the fall I probably walk with my kids about 10-15 miles a day. Which is a good work out. But I eat crap food all week long. But here on the glacier I walk probably about the same but in snow. Which if anyone has ever walked in snow for a long period of time it will build muscles and change the shape or your legs. Trust me. I go and hike out to the photo spot, sit and wait for people to go by on sleds, then I take their picture and hike back. I do this about 10-11 times a day (round trip) and it adds up. I also lift 5 gallon buckets of poop (20-30lbs) in each hand every morning and carry them to the poop barrels. On every helicopter there is at least a 5 gallon jug of water which has to go to the water 'buffalo' (aka a large water storage container) and each of those weigh 40+ pounds. My arms and legs get a work out every day which is great.
But my feet are gross. From living in rubber boots all summer long in sweaty socks they are terrible, fortunately no trench foot yet. I have also strained a muscle in my foot and can feel a huge knot in the muscle which hurts every now and again but is working it's way out. I also have strained both my knees. Under the knee cap is where they hurt the most. Once again, it's just a strained muscle which has slowly been going away. My last problem: a sunglasses tan. Which is bad. I look a raccoon. But such is life on the glacier.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Glacial Aliments
I'm sure you can imagine that there are a few reoccurring health problems. They affect us all. They are something that we also joke about after hours. I've made a list of some of these problems.
Tourist Voice:
It's a tone of voice, cadence and diction of our speech that we change in order to make ourselves seem more friendly. We have to 'paint on our nice faces' everyday and at the end of the day we don't have to be nice. People say things like 'Well... at least the helicopter ride was nice.' we cannot say back 'Well... at least my last tour was nice.' and so we have the tourist voice that we turn on and keep on all day.
Snap Thumb:
Snap thumb comes from hooking up dogs. The snaps that one has to do and undo in order to get the dog from it's house to the line will sometimes leave little cuts on your thumb. These sting like you would not believe. I had about 15-20 of these small cuts on my thumb. Every time I went to wash my hands my thumbs were throbbing.
Tourist Elbow:
Too much waving. It's like tennis elbow, repetitive motion. The pain is on the outside of ones elbow and feels a bit like a tendon. It's probably the most pathetic pain I've ever felt... too much waving.
Christmas Feet:
Also known as 'trench foot'. Yes this is a serious thing that does happen on the glacier. Peoples feet will go numb from being in the cold and wet for too long. Mine haven't started yet and I plan on keeping it that way. They go numb during the summer and don't come back until Christmas. This is nerve damage. Probably this is the worst thing that could happen up on the glacier.
Tourist Voice:
It's a tone of voice, cadence and diction of our speech that we change in order to make ourselves seem more friendly. We have to 'paint on our nice faces' everyday and at the end of the day we don't have to be nice. People say things like 'Well... at least the helicopter ride was nice.' we cannot say back 'Well... at least my last tour was nice.' and so we have the tourist voice that we turn on and keep on all day.
Snap Thumb:
Snap thumb comes from hooking up dogs. The snaps that one has to do and undo in order to get the dog from it's house to the line will sometimes leave little cuts on your thumb. These sting like you would not believe. I had about 15-20 of these small cuts on my thumb. Every time I went to wash my hands my thumbs were throbbing.
Tourist Elbow:
Too much waving. It's like tennis elbow, repetitive motion. The pain is on the outside of ones elbow and feels a bit like a tendon. It's probably the most pathetic pain I've ever felt... too much waving.
Christmas Feet:
Also known as 'trench foot'. Yes this is a serious thing that does happen on the glacier. Peoples feet will go numb from being in the cold and wet for too long. Mine haven't started yet and I plan on keeping it that way. They go numb during the summer and don't come back until Christmas. This is nerve damage. Probably this is the worst thing that could happen up on the glacier.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Poop
It's part of my reality, both human and dog poop. After my first week on the glacier my mom asked me 'so what do they do with the poop?' and I'm sure she wasn't the only one who was curious. So here are... an entire post dedicated to poop.
Every morning at 6am I'm out in a dog yard scooping poop. Dog pee is sterile (aka it's clean) and it doesn't have enough of an impact because it's immediately absorbed through the snow, so we leave the yellow snow. The little treasures get put into 5 gallon buckets and then they are dumped into one of 3 50 gallon barrels. Scooping up after 40 dogs is a bit of a job but I feel that if you get it done in about 45 minutes you're doing good. It's an art to pick up just the dog poop and not the snow. Some dogs enjoy spreading their poop everywhere so that their little section of the yard smells like them. They've claimed it. These dogs are my least favorite in the morning. Usually scooping 3 times a day is the easiest because in the morning you will fill up about 2 buckets of poop, and the afternoon 1- 1 1/2, and at night 2. It's super annoying when you have more than 2 buckets to carry to the barrels because then it means more than one trip.
Human poop is a little different. We have 2 porta-pottys which have been converted to hold a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat on it. It's always someones job to empty and clean them twice a day. They go into a different set of barrels. We also add a chemical which breaks up the poop.
These barrels then get capped and a helicopter comes and gets them. A cable is attached to the bottom of a helicopter and the barrels are picked up and brought on down to town where they either go in a compost bin (dog poop) or the sewage treatment plant (human). Yes, dog poop gets helicoptered out.
Every morning at 6am I'm out in a dog yard scooping poop. Dog pee is sterile (aka it's clean) and it doesn't have enough of an impact because it's immediately absorbed through the snow, so we leave the yellow snow. The little treasures get put into 5 gallon buckets and then they are dumped into one of 3 50 gallon barrels. Scooping up after 40 dogs is a bit of a job but I feel that if you get it done in about 45 minutes you're doing good. It's an art to pick up just the dog poop and not the snow. Some dogs enjoy spreading their poop everywhere so that their little section of the yard smells like them. They've claimed it. These dogs are my least favorite in the morning. Usually scooping 3 times a day is the easiest because in the morning you will fill up about 2 buckets of poop, and the afternoon 1- 1 1/2, and at night 2. It's super annoying when you have more than 2 buckets to carry to the barrels because then it means more than one trip.
Human poop is a little different. We have 2 porta-pottys which have been converted to hold a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat on it. It's always someones job to empty and clean them twice a day. They go into a different set of barrels. We also add a chemical which breaks up the poop.
These barrels then get capped and a helicopter comes and gets them. A cable is attached to the bottom of a helicopter and the barrels are picked up and brought on down to town where they either go in a compost bin (dog poop) or the sewage treatment plant (human). Yes, dog poop gets helicoptered out.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Tourists
After dogs the biggest part of my job is keeping tourists happy. I make my money off tourists, they are what pays for everything. I never for a second forget that they are the reason why I can be here and living the way that I do.
The town I live in is a cruise ship port. People are all on vacation and they come off their cruise and then go into town and do their shopping thing/ other excursions. You can see the buses full for the tours going by to try gold panning or go to some sort of salmon bake. They go in and out of shops and there are shows that actors dress up in period costume for. After all this town was a bit of a rough place during the gold rush and people enjoy attempting to go back to that time period.
I have been on a cruise before, granted it was to Western Caribbean, but still they are all pretty much the same. In every port there are a series of excursions that you can do and there is usually a town that you can go shopping in. The towns have pretty much the same stores. I'll let you in on a little secret: when you're doing the cruise stops keep in mind that a lot of the shops are all owned by the same people in every port. So a company will have a shop in port #1, #2, #3... they will also have multiple shops in the same town attracting a different audience. The tourists come off the ship... walk around... and then get back on. There are thousands of tourists on each ship.
Now one would hope that if you were paying for an excursion you would be interested in the tour offered. Boy was I wrong! In an ideal world, yes this is what happens, but in the real world some people just look at the price tag and say 'well it's the most expensive it must be good.' and so that is how more people than I imagined get up to Dog Camp and are not actually be interested in dogs. Many people are, but then you have some who are more interested in the snowmobiles. It's very sad for the mushers when they would rather sit on the snowmobile and take pictures rather than pet a dog who is dying for attention. They also are the same people at the end of the tour who are not interested in puppies. I wonder if they have a soul....
Most tourists are nice but then every now and again you get the one or two that just don't get it. They treat you like you're less-than they don't accept 'no' as an answer. They pick on my sunglasses tan and don't listen when I tell them things. Yes I realize they are on vacation but when I say 'It's time to go towards the helicopter site' I don't actually mean 'please take 15 more pictures of puppies and take your gloves off, take pictures of you jumping with a dog team in the background, and go to the bathroom.' Funny how it seems that when I close the box full of puppies people seem to think that RIGHT THEN is the time to take more pictures... even though I've warned them it's going to be closed soon. Tourists do love their picture taking. Another thing they love is to ask the same questions 'When are you getting out of school?' 'Do you live here?' 'Do you have another shot of us?'
I take their action shot while they are sled, and it's moving. As I'm sure you can imagine this becomes quite challenging 'Everyone smile and wave! Now look at me! 3..2..1!' most of the time it turns out just fine. Then there are times when someones hand is in someones face. I will retake the photo if this is the case. However I will not take the photo if your own hand is in front of your face. I counted you down, I warned you, and then your musher told you too. Not my fault. Also the people who will keep their camera in front of their face I will not retake their picture, they will have some amazing video of me taking their picture and telling them to look at me. Then they ask why I have a picture with either their hand or a camera in their face. Tourists will often times take so many pictures that they do what we call the 'virtual tour' which means that they never taken their camera away from their face and just look around... with their eyes. They are constantly looking through the lens of their camera, rather than with their own eyes. You'd rather watch the tour instead of experience it.
Hundreds of tourists come and go and I've yet to have an unhappy tourist. The ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that do something incredibly stupid like ask 'so do you ever get cold up here?' or 'Do you helicopter the dogs in every day and out every night?' my personal favorite 'is this really your career?' or 'so what is your goal in life really?' Well it sure as f*ck isn't to take your picture lady, get back on the helicopter.
At the end of the day we all share our stories, after all we do need to vent about our day. But like I said we all keep in mind that without tourists our job wouldn't happen. With that said we all wake up again and paint on our happy faces to greet the next batch of tourists.
The town I live in is a cruise ship port. People are all on vacation and they come off their cruise and then go into town and do their shopping thing/ other excursions. You can see the buses full for the tours going by to try gold panning or go to some sort of salmon bake. They go in and out of shops and there are shows that actors dress up in period costume for. After all this town was a bit of a rough place during the gold rush and people enjoy attempting to go back to that time period.
I have been on a cruise before, granted it was to Western Caribbean, but still they are all pretty much the same. In every port there are a series of excursions that you can do and there is usually a town that you can go shopping in. The towns have pretty much the same stores. I'll let you in on a little secret: when you're doing the cruise stops keep in mind that a lot of the shops are all owned by the same people in every port. So a company will have a shop in port #1, #2, #3... they will also have multiple shops in the same town attracting a different audience. The tourists come off the ship... walk around... and then get back on. There are thousands of tourists on each ship.
Now one would hope that if you were paying for an excursion you would be interested in the tour offered. Boy was I wrong! In an ideal world, yes this is what happens, but in the real world some people just look at the price tag and say 'well it's the most expensive it must be good.' and so that is how more people than I imagined get up to Dog Camp and are not actually be interested in dogs. Many people are, but then you have some who are more interested in the snowmobiles. It's very sad for the mushers when they would rather sit on the snowmobile and take pictures rather than pet a dog who is dying for attention. They also are the same people at the end of the tour who are not interested in puppies. I wonder if they have a soul....
Most tourists are nice but then every now and again you get the one or two that just don't get it. They treat you like you're less-than they don't accept 'no' as an answer. They pick on my sunglasses tan and don't listen when I tell them things. Yes I realize they are on vacation but when I say 'It's time to go towards the helicopter site' I don't actually mean 'please take 15 more pictures of puppies and take your gloves off, take pictures of you jumping with a dog team in the background, and go to the bathroom.' Funny how it seems that when I close the box full of puppies people seem to think that RIGHT THEN is the time to take more pictures... even though I've warned them it's going to be closed soon. Tourists do love their picture taking. Another thing they love is to ask the same questions 'When are you getting out of school?' 'Do you live here?' 'Do you have another shot of us?'
I take their action shot while they are sled, and it's moving. As I'm sure you can imagine this becomes quite challenging 'Everyone smile and wave! Now look at me! 3..2..1!' most of the time it turns out just fine. Then there are times when someones hand is in someones face. I will retake the photo if this is the case. However I will not take the photo if your own hand is in front of your face. I counted you down, I warned you, and then your musher told you too. Not my fault. Also the people who will keep their camera in front of their face I will not retake their picture, they will have some amazing video of me taking their picture and telling them to look at me. Then they ask why I have a picture with either their hand or a camera in their face. Tourists will often times take so many pictures that they do what we call the 'virtual tour' which means that they never taken their camera away from their face and just look around... with their eyes. They are constantly looking through the lens of their camera, rather than with their own eyes. You'd rather watch the tour instead of experience it.
Hundreds of tourists come and go and I've yet to have an unhappy tourist. The ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that do something incredibly stupid like ask 'so do you ever get cold up here?' or 'Do you helicopter the dogs in every day and out every night?' my personal favorite 'is this really your career?' or 'so what is your goal in life really?' Well it sure as f*ck isn't to take your picture lady, get back on the helicopter.
At the end of the day we all share our stories, after all we do need to vent about our day. But like I said we all keep in mind that without tourists our job wouldn't happen. With that said we all wake up again and paint on our happy faces to greet the next batch of tourists.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Puppies!
The little guys at camp are just cutting teeth and getting curious about things like earrings, necklaces and fur coats. They especially like to try to ruin these things. As of right now people have left with their expensive souvenirs in tack. I fear though that this may not be the case for long.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Dogs
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